


drawn to the fire

by Wildehack (Tyleet)



Series: one girl in all the galaxy [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 02:50:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8428540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: One girl in all the galaxy.





	

Rey is alone in the guts of a battle cruiser when it hits her out of nowhere: a sudden spike of heat and hunger.

She almost loses her grip on her grapple, and she lands harder than she ever has before, but it isn’t jarring. Rey rubs her own arms, worried about the prickling, pent-up feeling rushing through her. She was tired, a minute ago, and thirsty–but now she feels like she could work another six hours without rest. She feels like she could _run home_ and still not run out of energy.   
  
“Something’s wrong,” she says out loud, testing it, and the bright desert day does not answer her. “Something is very wrong,” she repeats, and loads up her speeder, leaps onto the back, wonders all the way back to the outpost what she should do about the hunger, this ravenous marrow-deep feeling that there’s something she needs to _do_ , there’s something terribly important she _needs_ , but she can’t explain what it is.   
  
She finds out that night, after she’s battened up the hatches and recited the usual charms for safety and protection. It took a few years before the wards started recognizing the AT-AT as a home, but now no vampire can enter without her permission. Mostly demons stay away from the wasteland and scavenger territory, but her basic magecraft should discourage anything too nasty from looking her way.   
  
But having lit her candle against the shadows, knowing only idiots and monsters leave the safety of indoors at night, Rey feels the hunger fill her up. The hunger wants her to go outside, the hunger wants her to find a monster or risk shaking apart from sheer inaction, the hunger wants her to pick up her staff and laugh into the dark.   
  
“Don’t,” Rey mutters sternly to herself, gripping her own knees, unable to stop herself from staring at the door. “Something’s wrong with you. Stay where you are.”    
  
But after the night deepens a little, something comes scratching at Rey’s door. “I can feel you,” the monster says, rattling and old and amused. “All ripe and flush with power. All alone, too. Come on out, little girl. Come out and let me see you.”   
  
Rey stops trembling, and the hungers leaps within her, transforms into something like a fierce gladness, beating against her ribcage. She picks up her staff, and faces the door. “Why don’t you come in,” she suggests, and bares her teeth in a smile.   
  
*   
  
She kills a monster every night that week, adds to the desert’s stores of dust. She finds she’s stronger than before, that the hunger gave her strength to match her newfound recklessness. She brings Plott bigger, better hauls, parts that would have taken her weeks to dig up before. She knocks out the men he sends after her, to see how she’s doing it. The next time Plott tries to undersell her, she crumples the edge of his trade counter by flexing her fingers, and he flinches hard, gives Rey her rightful portions.   
  
More monsters come.   
  
Rey slays them all.   
  
When she sleeps, which isn’t often, she dreams of a woman, Human, dark-eyed, dark-haired, white clay daubed on her face. 

 _This is where you sleep_ , the woman says, and shows her a bed of ash. _This is where you live_ , the woman says, and shows her a house of bone. 

 _This is who you are_ , the woman says, and Rey finds herself in a vast stone chamber, surrounded by thousands of women, all standing still as statues. Some of the women are Human, some are not, but they are all young, they are all smiling, they are all carrying death in their hands.   
  
_I don’t understand_ , Rey tells her guide, looking around that shadowed gallery with a flicker of longing in her heart–is she one of them? Are these her sisters, the family she was stolen from? _Who are they? Who am I?_  
  
The woman reaches out and touches two fingers to Rey’s heart, her hand somehow sliding into Rey’s chest until Rey thinks she understands how it must feel to be a vampire, in the instant before the stake turns them to dust.   
  
_You are the thing that monsters fear,_ the woman says. _We do not live long, but we live well. Live well, Slayer._    
  
Rey wakes from the dream in tears, but she is strangely calm, wiping them from her cheeks. She can name herself, now.   
  
“Who are you?” the Resistance fighter asks her, days later, after they’ve stolen a ship and escaped to the stars. The hunger stirs in Rey’s chest, but doesn’t pull her back to the desert and the night. There are plenty of monsters, out in the black.   
  
“I’m Rey,” she says, grinning at him. “I’m the Slayer.” 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] drawn to the fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8829376) by [Shmaylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shmaylor/pseuds/Shmaylor)




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